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History - British — page 7
365 public-domain history - british books, summarised. Page 7 of 8.
Types of Naval Officers, Drawn from the History of the British Navy
A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
Through the lives of six exemplary admirals, a master military historian examines how tactical daring, rigid discipline, and professional character transformed the eighteenth-century Royal Navy into an invincible instrument of global sea power.
Flag and Fleet: How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas
William Wood
Through centuries of storm and battle, the freedom of the global oceans has been bought and preserved by the unrelenting vigil of British sea-power.
Drake's Road Book of the Grand Junction Railway: from Birmingham to Liverpool and Manchester
Drake, James, active 1825
A journey through the heart of early industrial Britain shows how steam, steel, and speed reshaped a nation's landscape and daily life.
Shakespeare's environment
C. C. (Charlotte Carmichael) Stopes
Reconstructing the living world of Renaissance Warwickshire and London requires unearthing the legal disputes, property transactions, and domestic records of a poet's contemporaries.
The War History of the 4th Battalion, the London Regiment (Royal Fusiliers), 1914-1919
F. Clive Grimwade
A citizen army of London clerks and tradesmen takes to the mud of the Western Front, writing its history in stubborn resistance and quiet endurance.
A Student's History of England, v. 2: 1509-1689: From the Earliest Times to the Death of King Edward VII
Samuel Rawson Gardiner
This historical account navigates the volatile century and a half that transformed the English monarchy from a personal, absolute rule into a constitutional power shaped by Parliament and the spirit of the Renascence.
The Riot Act
Great Britain. Parliament
A single statutory command transformed public assembly into a capital offense, forever embedding a stark legal ultimatum into the English language.
Impressions of England
A. Cleveland (Arthur Cleveland) Coxe
This collection of impressions serves as a thoughtful, mid-nineteenth-century travelogue written by an American clergyman. It offers a window into a specific cultural moment, capturing the landscape, architecture, and religious spirit of England through the eyes of a sympathetic observer.
Nooks and Corners of Old England
Allan Fea
This volume serves as a gentle, observational guide to the hidden, fading architecture of rural England. It captures the quiet dignity of manor houses, ancient village inns, and crumbling ruins before the encroaching modern world could sweep them away.
Milton's England
Lucia True Ames Mead
This guide offers an intimate portrait of a legendary poet through the physical remains of the city he inhabited. It serves as both a historical gazetteer and a thoughtful meditation on the enduring power of his legacy.
A Leisurely Tour in England
James John Hissey
A motor-car becomes a gentle instrument for discovery, allowing a traveler to bypass the noise of industrial towns and rediscover the quiet, enduring charm of England’s hidden country lanes.
The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 08 (of 12)
Edmund Burke
This work dissects the moral and political collapse of British governance in India, documenting a systematic betrayal of trust and humanity by those entrusted with imperial power.
An Introduction to the Study of Meteorites: With a List of the Meteorites Represented in the Collection
British Museum (Natural History). Department of Mineralogy
This technical guide serves as both a scholarly introduction to the physical properties of space rocks and a comprehensive archival register of the British Museum’s meteorite collection at the dawn of the twentieth century.
The Illustrated War News, Number 15, Nov. 18, 1914
Various
This periodical captures the visceral, immediate reality of the First World War in November 1914, serving as both a contemporary report on the front lines and a vivid snapshot of life on the British home front.
Tales of the Covenanters
Ellen Emma Guthrie
The struggle for religious freedom in 17th-century Scotland unfolds through these evocative narratives, where the quiet faith of humble martyrs clashes against the iron-fisted authority of a state determined to crush dissent.
Gipsy Life: Being an account of our Gipsies and their children, with suggestions for their improvement
George Smith
This work serves as a Victorian-era call to action, demanding that the British state bring the lives of Romany families under the mandatory influence of schools and sanitary inspectors. It is an impassioned, polemical argument that seeks to replace public indifference with legislative oversight.
The Unveiling of Lhasa
Edmund Candler
The iron silence of a forbidden kingdom meets the machinery of a modern empire in this first-hand account of the 1904 British mission to Lhasa. It remains a stark record of a collision between two worlds.
The early English cotton industry
George W. (George William) Daniels
The rapid rise of the English cotton industry transformed a localized trade in "fustians" into a global powerhouse, fundamentally altering the lives of laborers and the nature of capital through a relentless cycle of invention.
England under the Angevin Kings, Volumes I and II
Kate Norgate
Between the fall of the Anglo-Saxon world and the dawn of parliamentary England, an ambitious French dynasty transformed a fractured island into the cornerstone of a sprawling European empire.
History of the War in Afghanistan, Vol. 3 (of 3): Third Edition
Kaye, John William, Sir
A disastrous foreign invasion crumbles into a desperate salvage operation, where military honor, political survival, and human lives hang on every hesitant order from India.
Royalty Restored
J. Fitzgerald (Joseph Fitzgerald) Molloy
A vibrant, meticulously researched account of the Restoration era, this history captures the glittering excess, political volatility, and social transformation of 17th-century England under the reign of King Charles II.
The Story of the East Riding of Yorkshire
Horace B. (Horace Baker) Browne
This history captures the enduring spirit of the East Riding of Yorkshire, tracing the region’s evolution from the primitive tools of the Stone Age to the bustling industrial docks of the modern era.
Worcestershire in the Nineteenth Century: A Complete Digest of Facts Occuring in the County since the Commencement of the year 1800
T. C. Turberville
This chronicle serves as a meticulous ledger of a single English county’s transformation during the nineteenth century, capturing a society in the steady, often grinding, process of becoming modern. It is a record of administrative, political, and physical change.
History of the Post-Office Packet Service between the years 1793-1815: Compiled from Records, Chiefly Official
Arthur H. (Arthur Hamilton) Norway
To deliver state papers and merchant letters through two decades of global war, unarmed mail boats were converted into armed commerce-defenders, turning ordinary sailors into unwitting naval heroes on the high seas.
Warwickshire: The Land of Shakespeare
Clive Holland
Rolling hills, quiet waters, and centuries of architecture define a landscape forever shaped by the legacy of its most famous native son.
Mr. Punch's History of Modern England, Vol. 1 (of 4).—1841-1857
Charles L. (Charles Larcom) Graves
A fierce satirical eye captures the growing pains of Victorian England through the sharp wit, outraged morality, and crusading journalism of its premiere humor magazine.
Bygone London
Frederick Ross
Inside the ancient square mile governed by the Lord Mayor lies a dense sediment of forgotten lives, vanished structures, and shifting loyalties. Beneath the roar of modern traffic, centuries of human ambition, violent political turns, and spiritual zeal lie buried under streets where Roman legionaries, medieval…
The Oxford Degree Ceremony
J. (Joseph) Wells
Centuries of academic ritual, forgotten statutes, and colourful traditions come alive in this meticulously detailed exploration of how the University of Oxford confers its ancient honors upon graduating scholars.
Rides on Railways
Samuel Sidney
Boarding early Victorian steam engines, passengers speed toward distant landscapes while witnessing the dramatic transformation of English industry, architecture, and daily life.
The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915
Various
Courage, terror, and bureaucratic precision collide as eyewitnesses and official dispatches chronicle the chaotic, bloody opening months of the First World War.
Social Life in the Reign of Queen Anne, Taken from Original Sources
John Ashton
An intricate, daily-life panorama reveals early eighteenth-century Britain not through abstract grand narratives, but through the vibrant, messy reality of its lost objects, public squabbles, forgotten medicines, and quiet domestic routines.
A History of England from Early Times: A Linked Index to the Project Gutenberg Editions
T. (Tobias) Smollett
A continuous march across centuries reveals how an island kingdom transforms from scattered ancient tribes into an expansive global empire through ceaseless political turmoil, shifting crowns, and systemic conflicts.
Trial of Duncan Terig, alias Clerk, and Alexander Bane Macdonald: for the Murder of Arthur Davis, Sergeant in General Guise's
Walter Scott
A military sergeant vanishes in the desolate Scottish Highlands, leaving behind a murder mystery solved—or perhaps obscured—by the spectral testimony of a restless spirit and the grim suspicions of a distrustful community.
Her Majesty's Mails: An Historical and Descriptive Account of the British Post-Office
William Lewins
The British Post-Office is a vast, intricate engine of Victorian progress, transforming from a disjointed, expensive burden into a triumph of civilization that unified a growing nation.
The Matabele Campaign: Being a Narrative of the Campaign in Suppressing the Native Rising in Matabeleland and Mashonaland, 1896
Baden-Powell of Gilwell, Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell, Baron
A military officer’s field journal records the brutal 1896 counterinsurgency in present-day Zimbabwe, capturing the chaotic skirmishes, grueling wilderness scouting, and tense peace talks that shaped British imperial rule in southern Africa.
On Some Ancient Battle-Fields in Lancashire: And Their Historical, Legendary, and Aesthetic Associations
Charles Hardwick
A rigorous antiquarian survey traces ancient Lancashire conflict through soil, burial mounds, and local folklore to separate true history from mythical idealization.
A Popular History of Ireland
Thomas D'Arcy McGee
A bitter, brilliant account of a nation systematically dismantled, Thomas D'Arcy McGee’s history charts how centuries of confiscation, betrayal, and unyielding resistance forged modern Ireland from the ashes of its ancient principalities.
The Royal Mail: Its Curiosities and Romance
James Wilson Hyde
Beneath the mundane surface of routine correspondence lies a dramatic history of perilous highways, cunning frauds, lost treasures, and the quiet dedication of human beings driving a vast national network.
Grain and Chaff from an English Manor
Arthur Herbert Savory
In a world moving rapidly toward industrialization, a reflective Victorian farmer captures the quiet, vanishing details of English rural life.
View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages, Vol. 3
Henry Hallam
A long, slow movement carried European life out of feudal fragmentation into governed states, transforming custom into statutory law and local violence into civic order.
The dissolution of the monasteries
Francis Aidan Hibbert
The story of how Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries reshaped England, told through the lens of Staffordshire.
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 08, No. 48, October, 1861: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
A diverse collection of Civil War-era American writing captures a nation in conflict through personal travelogue, historical allegory, dark narrative fiction, and patriotic analysis.
Outline of the history of the English language and literature
Anonymous
A fourteen-hundred-year history of speech and storytelling unfolds as a living organism, showing how a single tongue absorbed foreign invasions, shed its clumsy inflections, and gave shape to the Western imagination.
The Pacification of Burma
C. H. T. (Charles Haukes Todd) Crosthwaite
In the wake of the 1885 annexation of Upper Burma, British imperial authorities faced a vast territory torn by insurgency, rival warlords, and unmapped frontiers. This insider's chronicle details the methodical four-year campaign to enforce colonial order across a resistant countryside.
The Royal Observatory, Greenwich: A Glance at Its History and Work
E. Walter (Edward Walter) Maunder
The Royal Observatory at Greenwich serves as both a landmark for time and a monument to the rigorous, often invisible, labor required to map the heavens. This account demystifies the historic institution, detailing how it grew from a modest royal project into a global standard for navigation.
Indian Unrest
Chirol, Valentine, Sir
This survey offers a stark, contemporary look at the political and social tensions defining the British Raj in the early twentieth century. It examines the fractures between colonial authority, traditional religion, and emerging nationalist aspirations.
Traditions of Edinburgh
Robert Chambers
The city of Edinburgh is a palimpsest of stone and memory, and this collection of historical sketches meticulously uncovers the lost layers beneath its modern streets. It serves as an essential guide for anyone who wishes to walk the Royal Mile and see, rather than just look, at the vanishing past.
A Short History of English Music
Ernest Ford
The path to a national musical identity in England is a long, winding struggle against foreign influence and the persistent myth that native composers lack the necessary genius for serious art.